Quality improvement plan Prof Davidson

Introduction

Health care system consists of various areas that have different functions, and these areas need improvement from time to time to improve the quality of services offered. One of these areas is health care literacy of patients especially the least served; it is defined as the ability of people to access, process and understand basic health information (Lie et al., 2012). An elaborate quality improvement is needed to ensure the provision of quality services. Therefore in a quality improvement plan, each and everyone has a role to play. From the board of directors, middle to department staff in data collection and reporting, reporting implementation progress, orientation and education of staff about the plan and finally evaluation of the plan. Comment by Earl: ok

Roles

Board of directors need to review the quality improvement plan, once approved oversee its implementation by CEO, directors, managers and the staff. Executive leadership oversees the implementation of the plan by the staff. The quality improvement committee analyzes the performance data, evaluates the data and determines the effectiveness of the plan, and makes recommendations on the progress. Medical staffs implement the quality improvement plan. Middle management manages staff and ensures implementation of the plan and is answerable to the executive leadership. The departmental staff handles ensuring that they play their specific role required of them in the implementation of the plan that involves their department (Barrera Jr et al., 2013). Comment by Earl: Discuss roles specific to your project in depth – this is too generic

Data collection and data reporting

Quality improvement committee handles data collection and reporting. The committee should collect data, evaluate and analyzes it and make the necessary recommendations. If the plan is adopted, they determine the functionality of the plan and what changes need to be made to ensure its effectiveness. Comment by Earl: Be specific; explore in more depth

The board of management responsible for reviewing the recommendations and decides whether to adopt them or not. Once they approve they give a go-ahead for its implementation. The management team will take the responsibility of overseeing its implementation.

Changes implemented

There are various changes that need to be implemented to improve health literacy among patients, especially in the underserved population. Firstly is to promote universal access to health information. There needs to be readily accessible health either through their Internet or read materials such as brochures to every patient and should be presented in the simplest manner for the patients to understand. Comment by Earl: Draw from, explore, apply, and cite specific concepts from scholarly reference materials.

Secondly, to promote health education and health education standards; most standards have not been adopted to improve literacy skills especially in institutions. To help the patients and professionals have a common understanding, the curriculum needs to incorporate communication skills. Thus, the health professionals will become better communicators.

Thirdly, to incorporate a health literacy improvement plan into the mission of health care centers. Once the plan maligned to the duty of the healthcare facility, it will be part of every strategic plan that the health center makes. The healthcare will be able to identify specific areas or programs that need improvement in literacy, set specific goals and objectives of improvement and even budget for such process (Halverson et al., 2015).

Educating staff

A copy of the plan should be available to the staff to order to familiarize themselves with the contents of the plan. A step-by-step training is the same for every employee. The training will help them understand requirements of their role, what it is all about and how to implement it the plan. Comment by Earl: Draw from, explore, apply, and cite specific concepts from scholarly reference materials.

The health care management that include the board of directors and executive management should oversee the inclusion of literacy improvement in the mission and plan of the healthcare. They should also allocate some resources the production of materials such as brochures that provide necessary information. The health staff should also improve their communication skills through constant training and development to be able to communicate well with the patients.

Evaluation

Medical personnel should be constantly evaluated to ensure they are up to date with skills necessary to perform their work and are continually getting that knowledge through training and development. The plan and strategies incorporated in the mission of the healthcare should be constantly reviewed to ensure that they are being executed per the plan, and the goals and objectives are being achieved. The material used to present information should also be reviewed to ensure they are up to date and information modified for public to understand (Berkman et al., 2011).

Conclusion

Quality improvement should be constantly practiced in the health care system to ensure efficiency and improvement of services. Health literacy improvement realized if constant quality control measures in place. There should be a constant evaluation of the plan to ensure that it is achieving its goals and objective and if they are not they need to be modified. There are defined roles for each and everybody from the management to the junior staff to play in the quality improvement plan.

References Comment by Earl: Some good articles!

Barrera Jr, M., Castro, F. G., Strycker, L. A., & Toobert, D. J. (2013). Cultural adaptations of behavioral health interventions: A progress report. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(2), 196.

Berkman, N. D., Sheridan, S. L., Donahue, K. E., Halpern, D. J., & Crotty, K. (2011). Low health literacy and health outcomes: an updated systematic review. Annals of internal medicine, 155(2), 97-107.

Halverson, J. L., Martinez-Donate, A. P., Palta, M., Leal, T., Lubner, S., Walsh, M. C., & Trentham-Dietz, A. (2015). Health Literacy and Health-Related Quality of Life Among a Population-Based Sample of Cancer Patients.Journal of health communication, 1-10.

Lie, D., Carter-Pokras, O., Braun, B., & Coleman, C. (2012). What do health literacy and cultural competence have in common? Calling for a collaborative health professional pedagogy. Journal of health communication, 17(sup3), 13-22.